Lieutenant-Colonol Omri Borberg breathed a sigh of relief Thursday after evading demotion, but residents of Naalin have no plans to let the sentence slide. Ashraf Abu Rahma, the Palestinian who was shot while bound and blindfolded, was extremely upset upon hearing the judges’ ruling.
“The officer committed a crime, the court’s decision is unreasonable,” he told Ynet.
“I can’t understand how he can remain in the army after you see him on tape giving an order to shoot me. It’s a crime.”
The Tel Aviv military court ruled Thursday that Lieutenant-Colonel Omri Borberg, the battalion commander who was involved in the Naalin shooting incident, will not be demoted. The judges ruled such a punishment “will gravely hurt him” and recommended his promotion be postponed for two years. Borberg broke into tears as the sentence was being read.
Abu Rahma’s family also rejected the ruling. “This is the occupation’s court, it’s illegal. They fired at a blindfolded detainee,” Ashraf’s cousin said. “They should have put him in jail, it’s a war crime.”
Muhammad Khatib, member of Bilin’s popular committee admitted he did not have his hopes up as far as the sentence was concerned. “We are disappointed with the decision mainly because it will not deter others from doing the same. The Israeli legal system has a different approach when dealing with matters pertaining to Palestinians,” he said.
“Our current option is to launch an international campaign. We’re looking into the possibility of approaching the International Court of Justice.”
Muhammad Knaan, a Naalin resident who claims to have witnessed the shooting said: “It’s illegal to fire at a person when they’re bound. We didn’t want to see him in jail but we did expect the decision to address his rank and position. The court should not have let him stay in the army.”
The shooting incident was filmed by Salam Knaan. Claims were raised against the video suggesting it was doctored. “Professionals checked the tape and came to the conclusion it was authentic. The whole world saw the crime committed in Naalin,” Salam said.
Borberg, on the other hand, said he completely agrees with the court’s ruling regarding his role in the Naalim shooting affair. “It’s hard to describe the heavy load I’ve been carrying lately. I’m glad it’s over,” he said.
He added: “All I care about now is to return to my family, to my daughter, and continue contributing to the IDF.”
3 January 2010: Open letter to Combined Systems Inc written by Palestine solidarity groups
From:
Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (adalahny.org)
CodePink: Women for Peace (www.codepink4peace.org)
Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org)
The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org)
Dear Combined Systems Inc.,
As US groups committed to justice and peace, we are writing to ask that Combined Systems Inc. cease providing CSI equipment to the Israeli government in response to the Israeli military’s ongoing and foreseeable misuse of CSI crowd control equipment to kill and maim protesters in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli military has demonstrated a pattern of misuse of your equipment, directly leading to the death and injury of unarmed demonstrators in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Over the last two years alone, the Israeli military has used your products to kill two peaceful protesters from one family in the West Bank village of Bil’in, to severely injure two peaceful protesters from the US, and to seriously injure many more. According to the the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, two other Palestinians were killed by Israeli tear gas in 2002.[1]
As noted on CSI’s website, “Israeli Military Industries” are among CSI’s “military customers and development partners.” CSI has an ethical and legal responsibility to ensure that the Israeli government is using CSI products according to product guidelines. Unfortunately, the Israeli military has a well-documented track record of systematically using excessive force against civilians, including with CSI products as outlined below, and thus is not an appropriate customer for CSI.
Furthermore, it is our understanding that the tear gas sent by CSI to the Israeli military may be provided as part of the US government’s military aid to Israel. For example, for 2007 and 2008, the US State Department provided $1.85 million worth of “tear gasses and riot control agents” to Israel as part of US military aid.[2] As taxpayers, we strongly object to the possibility that CSI may be using our tax dollars to support Israel’s repression of Palestinian rights.
Most recently, on December 31st, 2010, Israeli soldiers fired what was described by multiple eyewitnesses as excessive tear gas at protesters in the West Bank village of Bil’in, resulting in the death of 36 year-old Jawaher Abu Rahmah from Bil’in. Around 1,000 Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners were demonstrating in Bil’in that day against Israel’s construction of a wall through village land, separating residents from their livelihoods in violation of international law. According to Jawaher’s mother Subhiyeh who was with her at the time, “We weren’t even very close to them and the soldiers fired tear gas at us… Jawaher told me that her chest hurt and she couldn’t breathe. Then she fell down and started vomiting.”[3] Jawaher was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital where she died the next morning from cardiac arrest. Protesters gathered tear gas canisters used by Israeli soldiers at the December 31st protest, including one very common canister with the letters CTS written on it.[4] CTS, short for Combined Tactical Systems, is a brand name of CSI.[5]
Tragically, Jawaher Abu Rahmah was the second person in her family to be killed by tear gas that was apparently provided to the Israeli army by CSI. Jawaher’s brother Bassem Abu Rahmah was killed on April 17, 2009 at a peaceful protest in Bil’in when he was hit directly in the chest by a CSI tear gas canister fired from a gun by an Israeli soldier. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reported in an April 21, 2009 letter to the Israeli military’s Judge Advocate General that the direct firing of tear gas at protesters was common practice and violated both Israeli open-fire regulations and CSI product instructions, saying, “The Open‐Fire Regulations require that tear‐gas grenades fired from a launcher be carried out by indirect fire, with the barrel of the rifle aimed upwards at a sixty‐degree angle. The Website of CSI, the American company that manufactures the extended range grenades, explicitly points out that the grenades are not to be fired at individuals, since doing so is liable to cause injury or death.”[6] West Bank protesters have collected examples of CSI extended range grenades that were fired at protesters (see sample photo below from 2009). In response to an Israeli reporter’s submitted query, an Israeli army spokesperson has confirmed in writing that the extended range projectiles are produced by CSI. CSI’s website also explains that these canisters are intended to break indoor barricades.[7] Different CSI products are labeled for outdoor use.
B’Tselem further documented that among those hit by extended range canisters fired directly at protesters was US citizen Tristan Anderson in March 2009. According to B’Tselem, “On 13 March, a Border Police officer fired an extended-range type tear-gas canister that struck Tristan Anderson, an American citizen, during a demonstration in Ni’ilin. B’Tselem’s investigation reveals that the police officer fired the canister directly at Anderson from 60 meters away… The grenade struck him in the forehead, fracturing his skull and injuring the front lobe of his brain.”[8] He is left partially handicapped and suffers slight cognitive damage.” The canister “caused severe traumatic brain injury and blindness in his right eye.”[9] Anderson, who remains in a wheelchair, “has not yet regained the use of the left side of his body.”[10]
In a September, 2010 report, The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, a coordinating body for unarmed demonstrations in the West Bank, noted that, “According to Palestinian Red Crescent records in Bil’in and Ni’ilin, 18 people have been directly shot at and hit by the high velocity projectiles since their introduction, in these two villages alone.”[11] In addition to the killing of Bassem Abu Rahmah and injury of Tristan Anderson, other severe injuries include those to Bil’in resident Khamis Abu Rahmah who “suffered a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage after being struck in the back of his head with an extended range tear gas projectile. “
Another US citizen, 21-year-old Emily Henochowicz, lost her left eye when an Israeli soldier fired an aluminum tear gas canister directly at her, striking her face during a West Bank protest on May 31, 2010.[12] Protesters have also collected numerous aluminum tear gas canisters with CSI and CTS initials on them that were fired by Israeli soldiers at protesters (see below).
Though B’Tselem reported on May 4, 2009 that Israel’s Judge Advocate General forbade the firing of tear gas canisters directly at protesters, [13] the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee[14] and the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz[15] documented in December 2010 that the Israeli military has continued to fire extended range tear gas canisters directly at protesters.
Reports by diverse human rights groups including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch[16] and the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict[17] have documented Israel’s use of excessive and lethal force against civilians. These reports, and the cases cited above of Israel’s specific misuse of CSI products, demonstrate clearly that CSI cannot rely on the Israeli military to use CSI products in an appropriate manner without undue death and severe injury to civilians. Therefore, CSI is obligated to end its sale of these products to the Israeli government.
Thank you for your attention to this issue. We look forward to your response.
16 December 2010 | International Solidarity Movement
On December 3, 2010, three leaders of the Ni’lin Popular Committee Against the Separation Wall were released from Israeli military prison: Ibrahim Amireh, coordinator of the Popular Committee; Hassan Mousa, spokesperson; and Zaydoon Srour.
Israel wrongfully imprisoned them for 11 months in apparent retaliation for their role as leaders of the nonviolent movement. During their imprisonment, Saeed Amireh, Ibrahim’s 19 year-old son, stepped forward as a powerful leader of the efforts to free his father.
ISM interviewed the four activists on December 15.
Ibrahim and SaeedSAEED AMIREH: I want to talk about the strategy of the Israeli occupation here in Ni’lin.
In 2004, Israel began to build the separation wall. Back then, there were no [organized] demonstrations and no organization like the popular committee we have now. We just went there, thousands of us, to stop the construction. One protester lost his eye to a rubber bullet.
We didn’t give up; we continued our protests against the annexation wall because it is just a way to steal more of our land. If we stay silent, they will continue to steal our land.
In 2008, they started to build the wall again and we surprised them with a large number of demonstrators. At our demonstration on May 27, 2008 the Israelis used a new strategy: high violence against us. There were many soldiers: if we were maybe 400 [demonstrators], they were 300 [soldiers]. We demonstrated every day and we could stop the construction for maybe 5 minutes but then they would shoot live ammo, tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets. They were surprised when we kept returning the next day and bringing greater numbers!
They wanted to stop us because the other villages joined in as the nonviolent popular struggle developed. We had with us international activists, Israeli activists and the media.
HASSAN MOUSA: Before our arrest, there were just 4 to 5 sites [of organized protest] in the West Bank. Now, there are about 50. If you suppress the people, the people will rise up. [Israel] committed very brutal crimes against our people, but our reaction was contrary to their expectation. When they shoot our people, the people realize who our enemy is. More and more oppression creates more and more resistance.
AMIREH: Our organization, the popular committee, represents the families and the farmers. Because we had the idea that nonviolent protest is the most effective form of protest, all of the people followed. We could stop the bulldozers for hours and it annoyed [the Israeli military].
Their new strategy against us was the curfew. Starting on July 5, 2008, no one could leave their house without the threat of being shot and killed.
On the third day of the curfew, the other villages came to support us and break the curfew – all of us went outside our houses! Two demonstrators were shot and one spent six months in the hospital, but both lived. When they saw shooting didn’t work, they arrested people for breaking the curfew. When they saw arrests didn’t work, they shot and killed 10 year-old Ahmed Mousa during a demonstration on July 29, 2008. [Ahmed is Hassan Mousa’s nephew.]
HASSAN MOUSA: I lost my 10 year-old nephew. It was terrible for me. He was my favorite nephew and a special part of our family. He was shot by an Israeli soldier in the head and died instantly. I don’t want anyone – Israelis or anyone in the world – to lose someone near and dear to them because of conflict.
Ibrahim and his youngest son in front of illegal wall and settlementsAMIREH: They thought that we would be scared, but after the funeral – that same day! – we made another protest against what they did to Ahmed and against the Apartheid wall.
The soldiers began night raids against our village and our family’s house was raided 25 times. My father was targeted because he was elected to be the coordinator of the popular committee. They arrested him and sent him to a military prison underground in Jerusalem under very harsh conditions. They beat him and insulted him and tried to get him to sign papers against those who participated in the demonstrations.
They continued the night raids and arrested 150 guys who had been in the protests to reduce the size of our demonstrations. They were surprised when they saw the women continue on instead of the guys. They could break our high spirit or destroy our protest!
I was one arrested during the horrible night raids. I was held from December 22, 2008 until April 2009. It was during my last year of high school and all of my future depended on my grades. I had a 94 percent average in my classes. They wanted to destroy my future and punish my father who wanted to see his children educated.
MOUSA: Before my arrest, the town was invaded by dozens of soldiers during night raids. I talked to one of their commanders when he asked me why we were protesting. I told him that there had never been protests here before they built the wall that caused us so much suffering. I said give me back my land, and I will stop protesting.
When they arrested me and brought me to court, I was astonished to hear the charges against us. They accused me of throwing stones. How could a person who is 37 years old and an English teacher be throwing stones!?! I said I am never a person who has believed in raising his hand against another. If I am throwing anything, I am throwing my words, speaking truth to the soldiers.
They accused me of having contacts with foreigners. If that is illegal, then this interview is illegal right now! I said that these foreigners came to Palestine through their Israeli airport and they had come here to work for peace and freedom.
Saeed near apartheid wallThird, they accused me of incitement. I asked them to define the word and they refused. If you consider incitement helping the injured, taking care of prisoners, helping those people who are suffering because they lost their land to the annexation wall – then, let the world know I am guilty.
Last, they accused me of joining a protest that is not permitted. There is an irony here. They grabbed up my land and now want me to ask for a permit to express my disagreement. I will never ask for a permit to protest on my own land. I was not protesting in an Israeli city.
They sent me to jail for a year and fined me 9,000 shekels. But the whole time we were in jail, the protests never stopped.
[Being imprisoned] is beyond description. Our state of mind was terrible. All the time, we were thinking about our families, our kids. We got relief from the other prisoners, sharing stories and jokes. But I told them that I didn’t want to share my feelings. I want to forget. It is beyond description.
There is a lot of injustice against us. We want peace and justice on the ground, but Israel is not respecting that. The Palestinian people lack the right of expression, right of worship, right of movement. I think the Palestinian people are right to resist nonviolently.
Once you have a goal, you have to keep moving toward it. Despite the grabbing of our land, the suppression, the night raids, we will never seek vengeance; we will seek justice. I want peace and tranquility to prevail on this land, to put an end to the hatred. I will keep going toward this dream. Even if we don’t achieve it quickly, even if I die, at least I will have planted the roots.
We have a lot of challenges and obstacles, but I hope we will overcome them.
AMIREH: In our nonviolent struggle in Ni’lin, hundreds have been shot, hundreds have been arrested and five have been killed by the soldiers. They do what they want, but our hope is that we will tear down the wall, and our hearts are still full of hope that we will reach our aim.
Timeline of the struggle in Ni’lin:
2004: Construction of the annexation wall begins and then is halted by nonviolent protests. Both the Israeli Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice side with the villagers of Ni’lin and rule the wall illegal
2008: Construction of the illegal wall resumes. Upon completion, the apartheid wall steals nearly one-third (approximately 30 percent) of Ni’lin’s land. The village forms the Popular Committee Against the Separation Wall. Repression increases against Ni’lin; hundreds are arrested in night raids, and Ibrahim Amireh’s permit to work in Israel is revoked.
May 28, 2008: Nonviolent demonstrations begin, seeking to block the construction of the wall.
July 5, 2008: Israeli army imposes total curfew on Ni’lin.
July 8, 2008: After three days, villagers from the surrounding areas join the residents of Ni’lin in a a demonstration to break the curfew. The Israeli military shoot two demonstrators who survive.
July 29, 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10), the nephew of Hassan Mousa, is shot and killed during a nonviolent demonstration.
July 30, 2008: Yousef Amira (17) is shot and killed during a nonviolent demonstration.
December 22, 2008: Saeed Amireh was arrested during a night raid.
March 13, 2009: ISM activist Tristan Anderson was critically injured by a high velocity tear gas canister, which struck him in the head
2009: Israel establishes checkpoints around Ni’lin attempting to prevent Israeli and international activists from participating in the nonviolent demonstrations.
June 5, 2009: The Israeli military shoots five demonstrators, killing one – Yousef Akil Srour.
October 2009: Nonviolent demonstrators symbolically tear down a part of the concrete annexation wall. Israeli soldiers reinforce the wall with metal beams.
January 12, 2010: Ibrahim Amireh, Hassan Mousa, and Zaydoon Srour – leaders of the popular committee – are taken from their homes and arrested during a night raid.
December 3, 2010: After 11 months in prison, Amireh, Mousa and Srour are released. Another 10 political prisoners from Ni’lin remain behind bars.
Budrus, a documentary film now debuting across the US, tells the story of a successful protest campaign by unarmed Palestinian civilians against Israel’s military occupation in my small West Bank village. Our struggle’s success and the consequent expansion of civil resistance to other West Bank communities may provide hope to viewers desperate for positive news from the Middle East, but today an Israeli crackdown on unarmed Palestinian protesters is threatening this growing movement. For our movement to thrive and serve as a true alternative to violence, we need Americans’ to demand that Israel, a close US ally, end this repression.
Budrus depicts our ten month campaign of protest marches in 2003-2004, which included participation by men, women and children, and by representatives from all Palestinian political factions, along with Israeli and international activists, to resist the construction of Israel’s Separation Barrier on our lands. Young women, led by my 15-year-old daughter Iltezam, ran past armed Israeli soldiers and jumped In front of the bulldozers that were uprooting our ancient olive trees. The soldiers regularly met us with clubs, rubber-coated bullets, curfews, arrests and even live ammunition. But we won in the end. The Israeli military rerouted the barrier in Budrus, allowing us access to almost all of our land.
The film ends with Palestinian and Israeli activists heading to the neighboring village of Ni’ilin where the struggle to save Palestinian land continues today. But following Budrus’s success and faced by a growing numbers of civilians protesting the confiscation of their lands, Israel has responded with military might, attempting to quell this new movement. Twenty Palestinians have since been killed during unarmed demonstrations against the construction of the Separation Barrier.
In Ni’ilin, in the dark of night, Israeli soldiers have staged hundreds of military raids and arrests of civilians from the village; hundreds more were injured — forty by live ammunition, and five, including a ten year old, were shot dead. Today, a horrid 25 foot concrete wall stands in Ni’ilin, behind which lie 620 acres of village lands taken for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
Through a five-year protest campaign, another nearby village, Bil’in, has become an international symbol of nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation, with world leaders from Jimmy Carter to Desmond Tutu visiting to show support. On October 11th, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, one of Bil’in’s most prominent protest organizers, was sentenced by an Israeli military court to twelve months in jail. His crime — leading demonstrations in his village that were very similar to those I led in Budrus.
During Abdallah’s trial, Israel’s military prosecution repeatedly demanded that an ‘example’ be made of him to deter others who might organize civil resistance. The EU, Britain, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all condemned Abdallah’s incarceration, yet he remains in prison.
Palestinians’ wishes are simple — we want what is ours, our land, with true sovereignty. We want freedom, equality and civil rights — what Martin Luther King, Jr. called in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail “our constitutional and God-given rights.”
But Israel is sending a clear message — even unarmed resistance by ordinary civilians demanding basic rights will be crushed. It is little known that the second intifada began not with guns and suicide bombings against civilians, but rather with protest marches to Israeli military checkpoints inside the occupied West Bank, and with civil disobedience in the tradition of the US civil rights movement. Israel responded by firing over 1.3 million live bullets in one month into crowds of protesters. When ordinary people could no longer afford to risk protesting, small groups turned, in anger and despair, to armed resistance.
Budrus’s struggle showed that civil resistance can bring down walls, both literal and those of the heart, and set an example for a bright future for Israelis and Palestinians in this biblical land. Today Palestinian and Israeli protesters are together confronting Israel’s military occupation in other villages. But this hopeful possibility is now threatened again by Israeli bullets and arrests.
For this future to materialize, those who are outraged by the violence deployed against protesters must demand an end to the injustice. If Americans want to see the example of Budrus continue to spread, individuals, civil society groups and the US government must act to pressure Israel to end its brutal crackdown on civilian protesters.
29 October, 2010 | International Solidarity Movement
22 people injured, 5 still in hospital, at increasingly violent An Nabi Saleh Demonstration by Henni
Many shebab, two journalists and a girl were injured on Friday at the weekly demonstration in An Nabi Saleh. Villagers had employed a new strategy in response to the increasing violence of soldiers and border police.
Demonstrators shot with pepper spray at An Nabi Saleh
Demonstrators split up and approached the road from the two opposite hills divided by the valley. The side with most of the shebab was blocked with massive amounts of teargas and attacked by border police. From the other side, most of the internationals, women, and children entered the road and continued the demonstration.
Police shouted and attacked some Palestinians with pepper spray directly in their faces. Soldiers attempted to arrest an international, saying “we want to talk with you.” With the support of other internationals and Palestinians he was de-arrested.
Border police declared the road “a closed military zone” without showing any paper or map as proof. Demonstrators asked to look at the paper, but the commander “was not able to find it”. Soldiers gave people 10 minutes to leave, threatening that everyone would be arrested otherwise. The demonstrators remained and argued with the soldiers, but the only response was a round of sound bombs shot directly at them.
Border police isolated the internationals and most of the children and women of the village from the shebab, occupying three houses in the village center and clashing with the shebab for several hours.
They shot two Palestinian journalists, leaving one injured on the arm and the other on the leg. Border police and soldiers continued their attack on the shebab until after sunset, pushing the clash to the olive fields surrounding the village, using rubber bullets and tear gas.10-year-old girl hit with rubber bullet at an Nabi Saleh
At this same time, the internationals and women were attacked with heavy amounts of tear gas. About sunset, one 10-year-old girl was injured by a rubber bullet. In total, 22 people were injured, and 5 are still in the hospital.
These weekly demonstrations have been taking place since January, 2010. One man in the village said “We want to build a strategy for all Palestine to find a way to resist against the occupation.” The village has a strong story of resistance: During the first Intifada almost half of its inhabitants were in jail. Women always participate in the Demonstration and act independently.
Ni’lin demonstrators cut away part of electric fence by Stella
Climbing the wall to raise the Palestinian flag
Friday, demonstrators in Ni’lin succeed in cutting away part of the electric fence that annexes land onto the nearby illegal settlement Modi’in Ilit. Around one hundred Palestinian, Israeli and international activists gathered under the olive trees just outside the village and, after the noonday prayer, marched through the village’s land towards the Apartheid Wall.
In protest against the illegal settlements that have already stolen most of their land and that prevent them from farming what little is left, some youth from the village threw stones symbolically against the Apartheid Wall. A few minutes after the demonstration reached the wall, the army responded with tear gas. As the wind was often blowing toward the wall, the soldiers frequently got a taste of the tear gas themselves.
Some protesters then managed to cut a part of the electric fence. At that point, soldiers came out from the gate to check what was happening, and the protesters retreated. Quite surprisingly the soldiers didn’t follow the protesters as they usually do, but went back to hide behind the concrete slabs of the wall and continue to shoot tear gas.
The demonstration finished around 3 p.m. with no injures or arrests.
Soldiers hiding behind the concrete prove of the Apartheid
